Undercover Scout. Jenna Kernan

Extract

       About the Publisher

       Chapter One

      Detective Ava Hood watched her prime suspect, Dr. Kee Redhorse, through her field glasses and scowled. You couldn’t tell about a person by looking. Dr. Redhorse was a great example of that. Charming, well liked by his tribe, above reproach and the very last person you would suspect. But as it turned out, Ava suspected everyone. And no one was this squeaky clean.

      Redhorse was a trusted member of the Turquoise Canyon people. A physician, newly board certified and quite possibly a monster.

      She sat in her Chevy Malibu, parked nose out, between the battered yellow bulldozer that created the temporary road and a ten-foot pile of gravel. From her position she could see the FEMA housing trailers that included her sister’s and the one assigned to Dr. Richard Day and Dr. Kee Redhorse. She noted in her log that Kee left his assigned FEMA trailer on Sunday to go for a walk at 8:08 a.m., October 15.

      Ava didn’t trust the tribal police on this rez mostly because Dr. Redhorse had a brother on the force, Jake Redhorse. Plenty of opportunities to look the other way. She knew if she wanted to get to the bottom of her investigation she had to do it herself and she didn’t have time for official channels. She accepted the potential risks and didn’t care for the cost. State evidence be damned. Justice would be served, one way or another.

      Her niece was missing—quite possibly a victim of the series of kidnappings that had recently hit the reservation.

      All young women. All to be used as surrogates in a baby trafficking ring run by the Russian mob.

      And all of them patients at the clinic shortly before their disappearance. That connection had been made only three weeks ago, ten days before her niece had been taken.

      She adjusted her field glasses in her hands and studied her subject. Redhorse was dressed in faded jeans and a college T-shirt, over which he yanked a well-worn, gray hooded sweatshirt as he descended the steps. He looked more approachable in casual clothing, losing some of that air of professionalism that clung to him during his shifts at the tribe’s clinic. She tried to ignore the way the clothing hung on his perfect frame and failed.

      “No one is that perfect, Ava,” she muttered to herself. She knew that much.

      Today, he wore scratched and scuffed Timberland boots and a ball cap. He was the sort of man that you noticed right off because of his easy smile and dark, intelligent eyes. Ava noticed him because she thought he was guilty. And if she reacted to him as a man, well, she would ignore it.

      How much had he gotten away with in his life because of his good looks and natural appeal? She hated charmers because that was how her grandmother described Ava’s father—the father she had never known. A real charmer.

      She had been watching both doctors from the reservation clinic, Hector Hauser and Kee Redhorse, since last Saturday night. She’d come the minute she’d heard from Sara that one of the missing girls, Kacey Doka, had reappeared after escaping her captors. She’d hoped to speak to Kacey but she and Colt Redhorse had vanished four days ago and she had suspected the Justice Department had them. She’d taken a leave of absence from her own tribe’s police force, the Saguaro Flats Apache. She only had a few weeks left in the position. She’d already accepted a new job here on the Turquoise Canyon police force, but the job didn’t start until the first of November. That was too long to wait to start her investigation. Time was of the essence and she had to start ASAP. Every good cop knew a missing person’s trail got significantly colder after the first forty-eight hours. Her sixteen-year-old niece, Louisa, had been gone for fourteen days and the police here had found nothing.

      No, she couldn’t trust the Turquoise Canyon tribal force to handle the investigation on their own—especially if one of their officers was blocking evidence.

      As far as her force knew, she was here only to comfort her sister, Sara, and help Sara out with her daughters, which was true. But they didn’t know she also planned to track down Louisa. That she’d do so alone just made sense. No one else to endanger or to let her down.

      Ava had managed to break into both Redhorse’s and Hauser’s temporary FEMA trailers and install a tracking program on their personal computers. The simple program gave her access to their bank records, email, calendars, browser history and social media accounts. She’d done criminal record checks on each and all their closest associates. The only hit was Kee Redhorse’s father, Colton, who was serving a sentence in federal prison for armed robbery. And his brother Ty, who had a juvie record, which was closed. Ava wondered about that one since the dates corresponded exactly to Colton Redhorse’s last heist. Even though there had been no other convictions, Ty was currently under investigation by tribal police for kidnapping Kacey Doka—the girlfriend of his youngest brother, Colt. Not enough evidence had been found to tag him to the crime yet, but there was still a big question mark over his head.

      And Colt? His record was clean. After Kacey had escaped her captors and fingered Ty as the driver, Ava had confirmed that Kacey and Colt had entered witness protection until the crime ring could be stopped.

      “Something that’s taking too long in my book,” Ava muttered to herself.

      Today was day eight of her investigation and she was running out of time. Soon she’d have to ask for help, return home or resign her job and stay. She thought about resigning from Saguaro Flats force altogether before coming here to Turquoise Canyon, but there were perks to being a cop—even one on leave. She still had access to police databases, which was imperative to her success. Quitting the police force would cause her to lose effectiveness.

      She knew the FBI was involved with the investigation because she’d received an alert on her reservation from Turquoise Canyon Tribal Police that they had requested assistance last week after it was discovered that one of their missing persons, Kacey Doka, was not a runaway but a victim of kidnapping who’d identified several other missing girls held captive with her. The Bureau’s focus would be on capture and conviction of those responsible. Hers was on recovery by any means.

      Ava had already spoken to Kacey’s kidnapper. The Russian was paralyzed from the waist down, still in the hospital at Darabee and on suicide watch. Ava got nothing from him as he still elected to pretend he did not speak English. She did get a photo of his tattoos and was running a check on them through the available database. Gang affiliations were often written on the skin and his said Russian organized crime. But they’d need connections here.

      First, she’d figure out who and they’d lead her to where the missing were kept. That was the plan.

      She’d learned all she could from her surveillance of Kee and Hauser and from their personal computers and found nothing to implicate either physician.

      She needed to get inside that clinic.

      Ava drove along the rutted gravel road, hastily laid before the trailers had been hauled in by the dozens. The dam collapse that touched off the move out of the tribe’s tribal seat happened just a little over three weeks ago. The evacuees from lowland areas along the river were moved to temporary shelters out of the potential flood area. The FEMA trailers had arrived and her sister had been among the first to receive one because she had young children.

      She parked before her sister’s FEMA trailer and ignored the barking as she opened the door. Woody, the big brown family dog, jumped up to say hello. She was surprised to see him, as he had been staying with her sister’s mother-in-law, who lived outside the reach of potential flooding. Woody had been added to the family at Louisa’s insistence and seeing him made Ava’s throat tighten. She gave him a quick scratch behind the ears and pushed him off until he dropped to all fours. His tail swung back and forth, thick and hairless at the base from too much chewing. A shepherd/pit bull mix, he had a head the size and shape of a shovel.

      Ava checked her watch. Redhorse should be back by here in about ten minutes. Woody poked